Critter’s Code

This is a picture of a bridge and a city. I like bridges and cities. They make me smile.

May-19-2009

OCSPD / Little Snitch / Mac OSX 10.5.7

OCSPD / Little Snitch / Mac OSX 10.5.79.6107

This morning I decided to take the plunge and perform the 10.5.7 update for my Mac. Mind you… I say take the plunge. I get no where as nervous running an update on my Mac as I did my PC’s *shrug* just sayin.. :P

After it rebooted I started to get a notification from little snitch that “ocspd” wanted to connect to “EVIntl-ocsp.verisign.com” on port 80. I wasn’t sure what this was, but I did know that it never occurred prior to the update. A little interweb searching brought me to this Apple discussion post, where someone stated what “ocspd” was.

ocspd is the “Online Certificate Status Protocol” daemon that processes all certificate validation. This handles both CRL – Certificate Revocation Lists & OCSP – Online Certificate Status Protocol validation of certificates. It’s part of both the part of the Keychain and certificate framework. Verisign is one of the common providers of Internet certificates so it’s one of the services the ocspd process will contact for certificate updates and verification.

You do want to allow this process to connect, yes. Only if it were attempting to contact some completely unknown site would it be cause for followup to verify the site.

Now, of course, they could be full of shit and have no idea what they are talking about, but since it’s on the internet, we all know it is true.

So… since it’s not illegal software that we are trying to block from contacting it’s website.. you should be alright.

Anyway… it’s been ages.. hugs and kisses to you all.


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Posted under Stuff, mac, osx
  • john
    Just open terminal and type "man ocspd" or "info ocspd" for the official description. I only saw this program used when I updated my iPhone. It could be a coincidence but I'm assuming it was part of the update.
  • Approval
  • Is anyone else noticing that their computer hangs every so often when this service is started and run? I can't seem to find any other common denominator and have tried everything to fix these random lockups, including a full reinstall. The only thing I haven't tried is a clean wipe and manual file transfer (not with Migration Assistant). THIS BLOWS! BRAND NEW MACBOOKPRO!
  • Jason
    Indeed, I block it with Little Snitch... I must have clicked 'Agree' at some point without reading the licence (as usual) ;-)
  • blaggy
    I would deny it. Why do you want verisign tracking your every move?
  • camron
    Thanks!
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